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A 20 year amateur gardener, but am just now getting more serious about it.

We have moved into a secluded home on 13.5 acres, which is mostly woods, but seems to be a micro-climate for the 2+ acres of yard. When we first purchased the property in 2002, it was quite overgrown with wild raspberry, thorn bushes, poison ivy & sassafras. All the previous owners must have just "lived" here, with no mind to maintenance of home & yard. We have cleared out quite a bit of that now, but still have some tidying up to do & then the serious planting of grass, flowers & some natural plantings.

The soil is all sand, which has helped with the flooding downpours we seem to get. It soaks up pretty quickly, but only after it has washed away any "soil" that�s protecting the roots of my plants.

Luckily, we have two wood burning fireplace inserts in our house to supply me with lots of wood ashes & we have lots of woods to supply us for that need as well.

My husband had made me a diamond shaped flowerbed in one of the more sunnier locations. It has been one of my more successful gardens. It�s still in progress as I�m always discovering new plants that could go in it.

I have some pretty peach colored daylilies in that flower bed that encircle a huge rock in the center. It�s a Siloam Virginia Henson. It has a full day of bloom & even though I just planted them in 2004, the 2005 bloom season lasted over 5 weeks & each plant had over 20 blooms!

I also planted some Peacock Orchids around the rock but didn�t realize that they weren�t supposed to be hardy in Zone 5, only to zone 7. I left them winter over with a very heavy mulch of leaves & they�re coming up now. It will be interesting to see if they bloom though because I planted several types of zinna in front of them & they are now over 5 ft tall & creating shade on them. I hope they do something because they smell wonderful in the evenings.

I planted a Persian Cornflower in the Diamond bed last year & it turned out not to be the best spot for it to get as tall as it does. Very unique lavendar & white flowers, but I think I will move it to a different spot so that it can spread & have something to lean against as it gets over 3 ft. tall. It will still require some support, but it won�t look so out of place.

I am going to try to do some woodland gardening with mostly naturalizing plants & hope the Columbine seeds I collected from a heritage variety do something there. I have some lily of the valley left there from previous owners & it looks nice along the walking path. I plan to plant other bulbs along the path too to make it look more inviting.

Plants that I currently have are:

Persian Cornflower
Diantus Cheddar Pink
Red mini carnation
Alpine Blue Aster
Virginia Henson Day Lily
Blue scilla
Puschinia

I have lots of hosta varieties, but couldn�t tell you them by name as they were all inherited with the property.

I have some pretty day lilies under a huge oak tree bed called Razzmatazz that�s a raspberry color.

I dug up all my lavendar bearded iris & have more than I could give away to friends.

I still have some plants to plant.

I will see if I can get to the exchange part of my page & list what I have & what I�d like to have.

I live in: United States

My zone is: z5, IN

My Birthday is August 06 .

My favorite forum 1 is Garden Junk.

My favorite forum 2 is Perennials.

First registered on July 14,2005.